There are plenty of stories of people making millions on the iPhone App Store. However, for every one person that makes a million, there are plenty that barely make anything. That problem is then compounded with the fact that people can easily “crack” an app and then share it with others.

The most recent example of iPhone piracy comes to us via a post from Bram Stolk, who developed The Little Tank That Could on the iPhone. According to Bram, sales were off to a slow start and for the first five days he sold a total of 45 copies. Since his game has an online leaderboard, Bram wondered what those 45 people were doing. To his astonishment, he found that 1114 players had been playing his game. This led him to a quick conclusion that 96 percent of his players were playing on a pirated copy.

Unfortunately for Bram, he can’t really afford to continue to put time into a game that’s being pirated and not generating a lot of revenue, so he may be end-of-lifing the game soon enough.

I’ve mentioned in the past that I, too, have sold a game (Cronk) on the App Store. While we don’t have an online leaderboard, I know for a fact that Cronk has been pirated and may be one of the reasons that it’s not a multi-million dollar seller.

Commenters on Bram’s post are telling him to lower his price–he’s only at $1.99! Watch the video above of the game in action and then you can decide if it’s worth your $1.99.

I can almost guarantee that after the publicity that Bram will get for his post, he will finally make back his development cost. I would also bet that if he dropped it to 99 cents, he would probably hit the top 10 for at least a week.

Reader Comments

Simon Hill

Standard unfounded assumption here:
If we could have prevented piracy some of the pirates would have bought the game and the original purchasers would still have purchased.

While this seems plausible on a quick inspection, I could just as well claim that those 1114 pirates helped generate most of the 45 sales through word of mouth and trying (the pirate version) before buying. That also seems plausible, especially for such a large piracy rate and for such a small number of sales, meaning there was probably little exposure.

There is no way to tell how much of either claim is accurate.

I’m not here to say piracy isn’t wrong.
I’m here to say this claim, and all others like it, are unfounded since they are based on unfounded assumptions.
Also, attempts to use “evidence” like this harm the accuracy of the debates surrounding piracy, as this claim almost invariably crops up, without proof.

Jon Hoffman

I agree with most of what Simon said. I have used software without paying for it before, but I don’t think that makes me any sort of “pirate.” I ONLY download apps from the app store if they are free. There are plenty of people like this and I doubt that even half of the people supposedly on the leader board would EVER pay for his game.

That being said, the chances of someone deciding to pay might just about double if he does drop the price to $0.99. If I REALLY wanted to play it, it might be worth the $1 to not have to deal with getting a cracked copy from someone.

On a related note, I think it is silly to charge ANY money for a game that has a very similar, flash-based version that can be played in a browser. If you’re going to charge money for your game, it should be because the game offers something more than flash games. (a motion/touch interface isn’t “something more,” it is inherent to the device.)

Glenn

Ofcourse this is a sad situation for every iphone developer, but be aware of the fact that is most users did not buy the app it wasn’t worth the money..

Another factor might be the advertising.. A lot of people scroll through appulo.us’s newest apps list, and download whatever they want.. The application got lots more exposure than it did in a crowded appstore.. I was in the same situation, only 120 people downloaded my appstore app, while over 500 downloaded the cracked version on day one..

I am also wondering what Bram uses to determine the number of players.. I hope he didn’t use ip-adresses, because they change.. A lot..